Explained: The exact reason why Burnley FC are nicknamed the Clarets | OneFootball

In most people's lifetimes, Burnley have been knows as the Clarets, here we explore where that nickname actually comes from

Scott Parker is aiming to fire Burnley back to the Premier League at the first time of asking after a dismal campaign last season ended in relegation to the Championship.

It's a tier Burnley are accustomed to playing at, as most Clarets fans of a certain age will have see the second tier as something of the pinnacle, given they nearly dropped out of the Football League altogether in the 80's.

A 2-1 win against Leyton Orient was enough to save the club from what likely would've ended in oblivion, and things have been much more positive ever since.

The Clarets have been able to climb the football pyramid and have been lucky enough to enjoy several seasons in the top flight alongside a famous European campaign in 2018/19.

Burnley haven't always been known as the Clarets

A founder member of the Football League way back in 1889, Burnley have a long-standing and storied history in football, something that no one will ever be able to take away from them.

They've played at the same ground throughout the club's entire existence, and despite it being largely ridiculed now for its out-of-date facilities and tired looks, it's a stadium that is steeped in history, regardless of how aesthetically pleasing it is.

Burnley Football Club itself was actually formed in 1882 and were also one of the first clubs to become professional just a year later.

The modern-day football fan will always refer to Burnley as the Clarets, but back in the late 1800s, that wasn't how they were commonly known, with a variety of nicknames being used for the Lancashire club.

At that point, Burnley were commonly known as either the "Turfites", "Moorites" or "Royalites", and while the first two are an obvious play on words on the name of the ground - Turf Moor - the third one has a rather interesting story to it.

In October 1886, Turf Moor became the first ground to be visited by a member of the Royal Family when Queen Victoria's grandson Prince Albert Victor was in attendance for Burnley's clash with Bolton Wanderers after he opened the town's new Victoria Hospital.

To commemorate the visit, Burnley were handed a set of white shirts which were decorated with a blue sash and embellished with the royal coat of arms.

Burnley once didn't play in Claret and Blue

Those white shirts with a blue sash were in keeping with what colours Burnley used to wear back in the day, where they wore blue and white shirts, something which is difficult to believe considering their fiercest rivals Blackburn Rovers now don those colours.

You may be wondering how the change in colours came about then, and that too has an interesting story to it.

Burnley actually played in green at one point before the change, but in 1910, it was decided that Claret and Blue would be Burnley's colours.

The strange reason behind the colour change was simply that Aston Villa were the first division champions at that time, and then manager John Haworth believed that matching their colours could help improve fortunes on the pitch - crazy!

But his theory actually paid off, as the following season only a final day loss denied them promotion into the first division, so maybe his theory wasn't quite as wild as it first seemed.

That change in colours naturally brought around the change in nickname to the Clarets, obviously owing to the colour of the shirt.

And although success has been hit-and-miss ever since, the nickname has been a constant across the last 100 years.